Can belief in God increase cooperation between different religious groups?

Religion has been entwined with war throughout history, and many commentators point to religious diversity as a key cause of conflict, but is this assumption correct? Behavioural scientist Professor Jeremy Ginges in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, has been researching the connection between religion and conflict, with some interesting findings.

He explains: “I decided to focus this work on belief in God, because belief in supernatural deities distinguishes religion from other belief systems or ideologies that separate people into groups. Different religious groups have divergent – often competing – views on the nature of God or Gods. When people see violence across religious boundaries in India or Pakistan, in Northern Ireland or Israel and Palestine, they often conclude that these conflicts stem from religious beliefs and religious difference.”

“There is also a very influential theory that belief in Gods who care about moral behaviour – how humans treat each other – became widespread because it promotes strong cooperation within religious groups. The idea is that groups whose members shared these beliefs could outcompete other groups, because people were more willing to sacrifice for one another.”

Associated with this idea is the notion that religious diversity might be the cause of division and belief in a moralising God could cause conflict with those who believe in a different God.

“This is an important prediction that, surprisingly, hadn’t really been tested, even though it has clear implications for how we think about social diversity, immigration and the roots of violent conflict,” says Professor Ginges.

Over the last eight years, Professor Ginges and colleagues have been running experiments with different religious groups (Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews) in the United States, Fiji, Israel and Palestine. Using different experimental paradigms, they asked whether people see their own God – and the God of another group – as encouraging cooperation across group lines or fuelling conflict.

In their most recent paper, they ask: if a religious Jewish Israeli and a religious Muslim Palestinian are interacting with each other, what would happen if they knew that the other person was consulting their God before making choices? Would the Jew trust the Muslim who was thinking about Allah more or less? Would consulting God increase cooperation or conflict?

It seems that, at least for religious people, knowing that another person believes in God increases trust.

Trust games

To find out, Professor Ginges and colleagues ran “trust games” with Jews and Muslims in Israel as well as with Christians and Muslims in the US, and Christians and Hindus in Fiji. The trust game had two players: Player A and Player B. Player A began the game with a stake of money (at least a typical hourly wage in each place) and had to choose how much of this to keep or send to Player B. The money Player A sent to Player B was tripled by the experimenters. Player B could then return money to Player A.

The amount of money Player A sends to Player B is a measure of their trust in Player B. The amount of money Player B sends back indicates how trustworthy they are.

For example: if Player A was given $5 and sent it all to Player B, Player B would receive $15. Player B could decide to keep all the money, leaving Player A with nothing. Or, Player B could keep $7 and send back $8 so that both players benefit from the trust shown by Player A.

Participants were anonymous. But they knew the other player’s ethno-religious identity and knew that their partner had the same information about them.

The experimenters varied whether participants played with members of the same religious group or the other religious group. They also varied how salient belief in God was. In some games, Player B was asked to think about what their God wanted them to do before deciding how much money to return. Crucially, Player A was told whether or not Player B had been asked to think about God before deciding how much to trust them.

Professor Ginges explains: “We wanted to find out whether Player A would trust Player B more or less if they knew that Player B had been asked to think about God. We thought it would increase trust if both players were from the same religious group. But what if they were from the other group? And how would Player B actually behave when asked to think about God?”

Despite human conflict, humans are very good at cooperating across group lines.

Belief in God is enough

When people played with members of their own group, asking Player B to think about God before making their choice increased the trust of Player A and the trustworthiness of Player B and increased mutual profits. That might be expected. Yet the same results were found when people interacted with members of the other religious group. Even in Israel and Palestine, Jewish Israelis sent more money to Muslim Palestinians who were asked to think about Allah before making their return choice. That increased trust benefited both parties. To return to our example, the Muslim Palestinian sent more money back to the Jewish Israeli after consulting Allah.

Somewhat surprisingly these results were not influenced by how similar or different people perceived their religion to be to their partner’s religion.

Why does Professor Ginges believe this is the case? “It seems that, at least for religious people, knowing that another person believes in God increases trust – even when that God is different. It's not the similarity between God beliefs that is critical. Signs of religious devotion itself can increase cooperation.”

He continues: “Despite human conflict, humans are very good at cooperating across group lines. Trading goods and ideas is important for societies to flourish. Our results suggest that belief in a moralising God may facilitate such cooperation despite differences in the nature of such belief.”

A divided world

These findings sound hopeful, but we are living in an incredibly divided world. “I'm aware this paper is coming out during a time of extreme violence in Israel and Palestine. The findings may seem incongruous next to what many human rights organisations describe as a genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza,” acknowledges Professor Ginges. But he thinks he would find similar results today.

“We ran our study between Palestinian Muslims living in Israel and Jewish Israelis just after a prior outbreak of communal violence. Our experiments suggest that ascribing this violence primarily to religious belief or religious differences can be misleading, and risks obscuring the political, historical and strategic factors that drive it.”

Professor Ginges describes another study carried out in Fiji where the researchers used an experimental manipulation to heighten people's sense of conflict between Christian iTaukei (indigenous Fijians) and Hindu Indo-Fijians. They found that even when conflict was more salient, group interactions were more cooperative when belief in God was made more salient.

Looking ahead, Professor Ginges plans to move his research into more political domains and explore how belief in God can influence people’s real-world decision-making around political disputes. With three quarters of the world’s population identifying with a religion, this research could inform efforts to increase cooperation and reduce conflict in deeply divided societies.

Professor Jeremy Ginges was speaking to Charlotte Kelloway, Media Relations Manager at LSE.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a world-leading university, specialising in social sciences and ranked top in the UK by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026. Based in the heart of London, we are a global community of people and ideas that transform the world.

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